No Filler Music Podcast - How Sonic Youth Made Rock Real Again: A Conversation With David Browne

Episode Date: September 27, 2021

Join us as we chat with Rolling Stone Senior Writer David Browne, author of the definitive Sonic Youth biography, Goodbye 20th Century. We talk about how the band's "cool kids" persona carried them from the no-wave movement of the 70s and 80s into the 90s where they finally signed to a major label. We play tracks from Goo, Dirty, and Experimental Jet Set (the Geffen Years), and dissect their evolving sound between the 3 records as the band came as close as they ever would to mainstream success. And although they never quite reached the heights of label mates Nirvana (or any of the countless grunge bands that rode Cobain's coattails), we chat about the band's real legacy: bringing the art and culture of New York into the mainstream, and writing a playbook for so many indie bands to follow in the decades ahead. Tracklist: Kotton Krown Tunic (Song For Karen) Theresa's Sound-world Screaming Skull Dave Van Ronk - Sunday Street This show is part of the Pantheon Podcast network. Pantheon is a proud partner of AKG by Harman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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as always. And today we have a very special guest on the show. We had the opportunity to sit down and talk with David Brown, senior writer for Rolling Stone and author of the book, Goodbye 20th Century, a Sonic Youth biography. Man, we had a blast with this guy, didn't we? It was a lot of fun, dude. And without a doubt, the most informative episode to date, on our show, man. Because we usually just, we're fumbling around Wikipedia and random articles online just trying to cobble together some sort of like cohesive history of an artist or album. Yeah, we don't spend years researching before each week because there's not enough time

for that cue. You know what I mean? But David did spend years during research on Sonic Youth. That's right. It was like having an encyclopedia on the show. And that's, that's, speaking of encyclopedias, this is the first guest, Q, you, that we've had on the show, who has his own Wikipedia page. I just wanted to put that out there.

This is a milestone that we've reached. If you go to Sonic Youth's Wikipedia page and you check out the references at the bottom, a lot of those references are coming straight from this book. So this is the definitive Sonic Youth biography. And we got them on the show to chat about. the Geffen years for Sonic Youth. So their first three records on Geffen records, which is the first major record label that they signed to in the early 90s.

And we dive into the beast that is grunge that emerged from the 90s and how Nirvana just kind of got pulled into the Sonic Youth Solar System and how they kind of brought them into Geffen records. and yeah, the influence that they've had on the alt-rock, post-punk garage rock scene. And it's just pop culture in general, you know, how these guys were pulling in all these different players from the New York art scene. Yeah, so let's not give too much away here. So we're going to jump right into the combo that we have with David. And then next week we'll do a What You Hear an episode.

And we'll see what happens from there. All right, let's jump right into this combo here. Again, this is David Brown, author of the book, Goodbye, 20th Century, A Sonic Youth Biography. All right, David, so I wanted to tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into Sonic Youth for the first time. Sure. I am a senior writer at Rolling Stone, where I've been since about 2008. I, see, before that, I was a music critic or the music critic at Entertainment Weekly magazine. and before that worked at the New York Daily News,

and before that worked at a long-defunct music magazine on Long Island, way back in the distant 80s, which is actually where I first heard Sonic Youth. I grew up with two older sisters who were much older than me, 10 and 13 years older than me, and of course they kept telling me about all the great music I missed in the 60s when they were, you know, the Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel and the Stones, which I knew of all that music, but it was sort of their generation in a way.

So when I got out of college, it coincided with, I think, one of the great eras in recent music, which is the indie rock explosion of the early 80s. And it's a music that spoke to me pretty much out of the bat. I remember hearing REM's first EP, Chronic Town. this is right when I graduated college, which was NYU, where I studied journalism. And I had grown up actually a big fan of the birds. And I heard that there was this new band called R.E.M. from Georgia who were a little jangly like the birds, but not like that.

And I remember hearing that EP and being just knocked out by it because it had familiar musical elements from what we call classic rock. it was also kind of strange and murky and you couldn't hear all of Michael Stipe's words and there was a whole mystique about it and that that record helped introduce me was sort of my gateway in a way to this whole new world of indy rock that was coming out of all different pockets around the country in New York and Minneapolis and so forth and next thing I knew I was picking up records by the replacements and Husker Doe and the Minuteman.

I was lucky to get free copies of some of these because I worked in a music magazine where I wasn't making much money. But that music spoke to me, I think, in a way that's a punk right before, didn't in a way. I was maybe a little too young for that. And then I remember one day getting a copy in the mail

of this record called Bad Moon Rising. And on the cover was this scarecrow with a pumpkin head burning and in the back, there seems to be a song about Charles Manson. And I'm going, okay, what's this? This band called Sonic Youth. I'd sort of heard the name, but wasn't real familiar with their music. And that was their third release by then, second full album.

And as with the other indie bands, I was kind of immediately drawn into them and how unusual they were. Like the guitars seemed a little out of tune, but intentionally, you know, the, the songs were slittered with kind of splatters of noise, and the singers weren't belting it out in any kind of rock way. That was sort of my first intro to something like you, trying to figure out that record. It was an incredibly daunting record to grapple with right out of the, right out of the, right out of the the box. And I think that's the thing that was kind of cool about a lot of that music back then. It was, it was sort of challenging. I mean, that's a lot of that indie rock stuff. It, it wasn't, and Sonic Youth was embodied that. It wasn't music that was intended to necessarily

lull or comfort you. It was like pushing you to kind of hear things in different ways and hear rock and roll in different ways. There were no guitar solos. You know, I grew up hearing, you know, songs with, you know, whether it was the dead or Neil Young or Almond brothers or whatever stuff when I was a little kid, you know, they were guitar solos. In Sonic Youth, there were like guitar textures. And then you had like the hair metal bands and the arena rock that was just, you know, had just happened. And this was almost like anti all that, right? Like the no wave movement. It was totally anti all that. And that's a good point. I liked some of that sort of, you know, Heartland rock stuff of the mid-80s, like John Cougar's, John Melanchamp's, sorry, Scarecrow

album, I think was terrific. And so did Lee Rinaldo of Sonic Youth. He liked that album, too. But this was, yes, this was anti-the-slow enveloping MTV sound at the time. You know, you were hearing more synthesizers. You were hearing incredibly loud drums. I guess it was almost anti-new wave, right? Like that was kind of like a dig Yes. At New Wave. Yes, in a way.

Yeah. I mean, Sonic Youth and all these bands grew, grew out of the punk scene of the late 70s. They all were into that music. And yet, and some of those bands and some of that music morphed into New Wave, which was much more commercial, the cars and so forth and bands like that. And you had, so you had a certain number of bands going that direction. And then you had bands like Sonic Youth. taking punk and going in another direction and almost dismantling rock along the way. And that was, it was sort of like nothing I'd ever heard before, like I said, whether it was

the arrangements, the singing, the sound of the records, the absence of the guitar solos or recognizable hooky songs. It really was not like anything many of us had heard, I think, and it was really kind of an exciting thing to delve into. Yeah, and some of these bands, you know, they kind of, they presented themselves differently, too. There was no, there was no, like, latex or makeup or anything like that or, like, really over-the-top, you know, pyrotechnics and stuff with the shows. Like, they were, it was very stripped back and just like, this was before the flannel stuff in the 90s, the grunge stuff, but like this was the precursor to that, right?

It totally was. You know, Kim Gordon, who later became kind of a fashion icon, even back then, she had her glasses with a little flip-up shades on them and she would wear kind of a long peasant dress type things and she looked kind of geeky in her way and they kind of all did um Thurston Moore was this tall, gangly guy who looked like Dennis the Maness's older brother and you know Lee Ronaldo had this they all you know they did not look like conventional rock stars either. They kind of looked like people you would see around the East Village or downtown, which is where I was living also. Yeah, and I guess Michael Stipe and all of them were kind of doing that too, right?

I mean, that's kind of the whole, you know, as we were transitioning out of the, well, I guess the 80s, this is still in the 80s. So like the glam rock stuff was kind of happening alongside this. Bands like Poison or Twisted Sister. Right, right. I mean, Van Halen, you know, obviously they go back to the 70s, but like, Bands. Hanlon later on, you know, when they brought in Hagar and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah.

Rock and roll was getting increasingly produced, you know, even like, you know, I mean, those hair metal bands maybe had their roots in listening to Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath or whatever. But, yeah, but hair metal bands were very heavily produced and very slick. Packaged, you know. Yeah, had those, you know, those mile-a-minute guitar solos and, and, and, and, you know, and lots of hairspray and all that sort of stuff. And that stuff was starting to rise up around the same time too, for sure.

And I think, you know, the indie rock scene, it was more down to earth in a way. We're not going to quote your book to you too often, but there's actually a really good quote that I like. You have to get permission my trademark. But you said here that, you know, these bands, the bands that you're talking about were sort of like fighting for a way to make rock and roll fresh, wonderful, and real again. So I like that. Like you were saying, they were trying to make rock and roll real again. Like that kind of stood out to me.

Real and not quite as aggressive as punk was. It was, I wouldn't say these bands were singing love songs, but they certainly were expressing emotions maybe in a way, even if it was guarded the way Michael Stipe. or Kim Gordon or Thurston Moore would, much more so than punk. It was more expansive in a way than punk, too. It was taking that kind of stripped down punk sound of the 70s

and not going in the no wave direction. We really stripped it down. It was almost primal. But they were saying like, okay, we're going to take that kind of primitive punk sound, but we're going to kind of build on that. We're going to kind of merge it with some aspects of melody and some more emotional content.

And I think that that combination was really fascinating. It did feel incredibly fresh at the time. And also, we shouldn't forget the same time this is happening, hip-hop is happening. Right. And so you have indie rock, which is recontextualizing rock. And then you have this completely new, exciting and really unheard of sound coming up at the same time. I mean, in the same place, too, right? In the same place.

And that's another thing we should will quickly talk about, which is that, you know, New York City in the late 70s, early 80s was kind of an edgy, grimy, and sometimes, you know, dangerous place. You know, I remember a friend of mine going to see some band at. was either CBGBs or Mud Club, one of those legendary clubs. He got like stabbed in the leg. My gosh. You know, he came back to our dorm room and he had a big rip in his jeans. We were like, what happened?

Oh, I was stabbed. Oh, okay. So, and yet at the same time, it was the downtown scene, especially the mixture of music and art was just, you know, exploding. and because it was so cheap to live there. You could get an apartment for a couple hundred bucks a month. Like I did, unlike now,

artists could move into this part of New York and make a little bit of money playing gigs or whatever and survive somehow. But you know that you had Jean-Michel Basquiat doing his thing. You had Keith Herring doing his artwork. You had bands like Sonic Youth. Lydia Lunch and her bands. And they were all like sort of hanging out together.

And, you know, you see that a little bit in the Debbie, the Blondie video for Rapture. Blondie's rap song, but they have graffiti artists in the background. And it was this merging of cultures of white and black culture of music and art that made it an incredibly vibrant scene. I think someone in my book compared it to, you know, Paris and the tour. 20s or something. But it had that feel about it, at least for a few years there, of sort of anything as possible. And you could just like reinvent yourself. If you felt like you were an artist, you could just kind of do that and want to be a musician. I mean, you know, Kim Gordon wasn't a musician.

She admits that. I mean, she, you know, prided herself on being the most primitive bass player. But, you know, Thurston Moore was, they started going out. And he was like, well, why don't you be in my band. Okay. You know, suddenly she's in a band. And you could sort of do whatever you wanted in a way and still be able to survive, which is kind of an unthinkable thing right now. Well, I think this is a good segue. I want to play our first pick. You had mentioned kind of that stripped down punk sound. So you first heard Bad Moon Rising. Something you referenced in your intro about Sister, which came out 87, so that was a couple albums later. Specifically, the song Cotton Crown that shows up on there and how that song just kind of stood out to you. Let's play the song real quick, and then I want to

get your thoughts on it. Where do we start? So it's just, you know, what you say in the book is really does stand out about it. You know, it's the music, like the instrumentation, the guitar, the pace. Really tough, you know, and like gnarly. And then the juxtaposition with that is just a really pretty melody. And that, yeah, there's something different about that. Yeah. And, you know, I'd heard their music by then. And I remember that song is toward the end of the sister record. And up to that point, there are these, you know, great kind of springy kind of almost punky songs like Catholic Block. And there's this big sprawling song called Pacific Coast Highway and so forth. But I remember when that, I was enjoying it.

Now, I got to Cotton Crown. I was like, they're getting into something else that's a new here. I mean, yeah, the instrumentation, as you can hear on that song, I think the instrumentation is very, very sonic youth of its time. It feels like a snow shovel. A guitar sounds like a snow shovel scraping across the sidewalk, and the sound is kind of dank. And I hear that all these years later, I think of like a really gritty, yucky New York City Street.

You know, it just conjures going into the subway from you or something. It's like a dank subterranean kind of sound to it. And yeah, yeah, they have this kind of really pretty melody on top with these harmonies of Kim and Thurston, which are not quite Simon and Garfunkel when it comes to the artist. singers, but there's sort of a tenderness there that you can hear that's on top of this incredibly, as you guys said, gnarly kind of, almost kind of ugly kind of instrumentation. And that was, I mean, just jumped out at me at the time and listening to that record. And I thought, okay, they've done this, that gave us a hint of where they might go next, I think.

For me, anyway, I thought, okay, they've nailed. a certain splattery noise rock sound and some of those early records and spoken word pieces and all this kind of stuff and now they seem like they're getting ready to go somewhere else and that was that was like an exciting moment too it was just like okay uh and i think i remember feeling like the same way hearing right around the same time r em's like life life's rich pageant which was 1986. And that record was produced by John Mellencamp's producer. It all comes back to John Mellencamp.

But it was like, here, they're working with this guy, REM, who, you know, is used to making these muscular, radio-friendly records. And you put that record on and you were like, wow, this has a bigger, bolder sound than REM, but it's still REM. It's very true to them. And so, you know, you're entering a period with that music. the replacements also with Pleased to Meet Me in songs like Alex Chilton, where these bands are maturing, I guess, would be the way to put it, but in a good way.

Yeah, so funny enough, that's the one REM record that we've done an episode on, actually, was Live Switch Pageants. Yeah, we were a little bit familiar with that one, yeah. Yeah, that's a great one. That's a great one. It's a really good one, yeah. There's a lot of great stuff on that record, a lot of interesting things that they introduced on that record.

Yeah, yeah. But so from this point forth, basically you're like, you know what, this is a man that I should, I should probably pay attention to Sonic Youth after you heard Cotton Crown, it sounds like. And then kind of from there, we're going to transition into these three records that we're kind of devoting this episode to, which is goo, dirty, and jet set. So this is when, you know, this is the window where they sort of saw some commercial success. Is that right? as much as they were, I mean, if you want to call it that, right, but this is when they started to a very small amount. Very small map.

But in their, as far as their career is concerned, like this is when they were, if they were going to do it, it was going to happen during this window, right? Exactly. The first half of the 90s was the moment when Sonic Youth came as close as they ever would to becoming quote unquote mainstream. This was the period when they were plucked from the small indie label world to the major label world of Geffen Records who at the time was home to people like Don Henley and White Snake and people like that. It was the time when they were given a budget to make some

more produced records and they were they were went on tour with Neil Young as his opening act. They were included in an episode of The Simpsons. You know, there were just all these moments where for a period of time, they came as close as possible to, I wouldn't say becoming a household name, but which they never came, but as close as they came to having the sort of commercial success that the record company wanted from them. And, I mean, we could also argue that 1990 to 1995 was also the last great era for Rock. But that could be another. We're talking about that quite a bit, actually. Yeah, we talk about that.

lot. Yeah. But yeah, so they, they had a rough go of it, you know, with Gaffin from what I read, you know, from your book. I mean, you know, they got thrown into that Neil Young tour and were just not treated well by his crew, having trouble with the sound guys and, and, you know, all that stuff trying to, they're being told to turn down their speakers on stage because, you know, they're the opening act. They're not supposed to be louder than Neil Young. Right, right. All that kind of stuff. Yeah, the whole thing was a rude awakening for them, I think. And, you know, again, put it in the context, by the end of the 80s, this was part of a

whole movement of indie rock going mainstream in general. You know, usually we think that that happened with Nirvana after Nevermind became huge in 1991. And suddenly all the major labels were like, looking around like, hey, who's our Nirvana? and they start scooping up all these indie bands, none of whom sell what Nirvana did. But that actually all started in 80s when REM and the replacements. And Husku do were suddenly signed up by Warner Brothers and other labels like that. And Sonic Youth was the next one of those.

They put out a fantastic double album called Daydream Nation in 1988. Love that album. Which, it's funny, in interviews with them for my book, they said they really like it, but they never saw it as their masterpiece. But it was treated that way. It was a big epic record for them. And that suddenly got everyone's attention in the music business. And they end up signing with Geffen Records after entertaining offers from all kinds of people.

And they're like the least likely band to, in a way, given their kind of arty impulses and all that. But they, you know, it was what was happening in the culture. And yeah, they had a, they did have. a rough time making the goo album. I think there was a lot of disagreement within the band, the producers, as to how slick they should be. Or how produced should they be? How should they still have layers of feedback

and squalling guitars all around them? Or should they trim that back? And they had like, what, like quadruple the amount of tracks available to use, you know, in the record and the, in the studio. And they brought on the same sound engineer from Daydream Nation, right, at the beginning. And then, and then, yeah, they just lost faith in him, kind of, and he, he dropped out at the very end. Right, right. Yeah, it was, it was, it was kind of a whole learning experience

for them in terms of, you know, how did they kind of shape their sound to make it a little more radio friendly. And they have, they had access to more money and a bigger studio and all those tracks, like you say, and a guy who works on heavy metal records, Juan Cermain, who came in to mix it at the end. And there were a lot of cooks in that kitchen. Right. As everyone was trying to figure out, how do you make a commercial Sonic Youth album for the youth market?

And, you know, it's interesting that also, before they even made it, the record company was suggesting producers like Daniel Lanwa, who worked with U2 and Robbie, Robertson of the band, you know, like, you know, everyone was like trying to figure out how to do this. And ultimately, they were left to their own devices in a way. I mean, just imagine the pressure they were under, you know, on top of all that. Exactly, exactly. They were, you know, they got a decent advance, probably more money than they'd seen before.

And this was before Nirvana, too, of course. So the pressure would only increase over the next two XVI. records. And the timing too with everything, which we'll get into. Right, right. Yeah. So, you know, you mentioned in your book and you quote Shelley here saying that we should have just released the demos. Kim started crying when she heard the final mixes. Right. They just, they were not happy with it. Had they been used to having a more hands-on approach up to this point, were they a little bit more like involved with the mastering process, the recording process and stuff like that up to this point. And that's why they hear the final mixes played back with them. And it's like,

this is not what we made or this is not what we wanted to do. It was more, it was more like an economics thing. You know, the earlier records were made in like a week or something. You know, because you don't have a lot of money and you're working in some little, little underground studio in New York. You know, you make it as fast as you can and you got to save money. And indie labels weren't giving them a lot of money with Geffen. They had more money. They could spend weeks doing this stuff. And it's like with anything, you know, you spend too much time laboring over something. You overthink things. You kind of lose a bit of the direction.

And I don't think they were used to that at that point. They were given all these luxuries and all this opportunity. You know, Thurston, as he said to me, I think in the book, like, wow, what if we tried to make like an aerosmith record for Sonic Youth and do all this production stuff? What would that sound like? What would that be like? And it was a lot more fraught. Although, ironically, I think you listen to that record now,

it just sounds like another Sonic Youth record to me. You know, you kind of wonder like what problems they had with it. Yeah. But it is interesting to think about other bands that have had similar issues with just overthinking things. And, you know, once they get signed onto a major label, it just seems to always change things like for the, for the worst usually because, you know, like you said, if they're used to putting out records in a week or whatever, that probably is what led to so many of those moments on their, on their early

records where it just kind of breaks into chaos and stuff like that. Like, it just seems more raw and authentic and stuff like that. And then when you get into a studio and you have all this money and all this pressure and all these people in and out of the process and stuff, it probably takes away from that, that raw, authentic sound, you know, that they, that they were used to, you know, They were probably used to not having to care so much, right? Right, right. I mean, they cared about the music, but they didn't have the luxury of caring too much. Yeah, which is interesting because it seems like that's kind of what helped them cultivate the sound that they had,

was not having to care so much or not have to worry about it too much. What was interesting, too, about Sonic Youth. I kind of learned more about this when I did the book was the process of making these records, you know, which started from the early days, which was also very different. A lot of rock bands start with if there's a front person or lead main songwriter, let's say Mick Jagger and Keith Richards come in with a song. Hey, guys, we wrote this song called Brown Sugar. Let's work it up.

You know, that kind of thing. With Sonic Youth, there's songs would start with, there would be these long instrumental jam. Somebody would come in with like, oh, maybe this is the little chord thing. And they would just play this. And it was all just instrumental over and over and over again. It would become this blob of music. And they would just like cut it down and rearrange it. And almost like a jam, but not in a traditional way.

And then they would sort of whittle it down. And then one of them would decide, oh, maybe I'll write the words for this. They'd split it up that way. It was very different. They put a lot of forethought into their records. and in this case, they had the same amount of time, I guess, in a way to actually record them. Yeah, interesting. Whereas they would just go in and bang it out.

Now they had all this stuff. So I think between you having to deal with some of that pressure, they suddenly had an actual manager, you know, a big-time rock manager who was, you know, calling them constantly and updating them on industry stuff. off and then they go on to it with Neil Young, which was Neil Young's invitation. I mean, Neil, Neil Young loves guitar feedback, and he heard they were cool. So he invited them along, and they, as you said, they ran to all kinds of problems. So it was kind of a rude awakening in some ways to the realities of the business. But that said, like I said, you know, you kind of listen back to, and I think Gu was greeted with a little less of the ecstatic reviews of Daydream Nation,

which had been so built up by then. And so I think some people felt a little let down by it. But I think there's plenty of great music on. Oh, yeah. It's really, I mean, I think sonically, it does ramp it up from Daydream Nation. It's more in your phase. And, you know, cool thing. I think it's just one of their great sort of rocking songs.

If we can say that about Sonic Youth. Well, and speaking to hip hop happening at the same time, Chuck D from Public Enemy shows up on that. Right, right. And they were in the same studio. Is that right? They were in the same studio making, I believe it was Fear of a Black Planet, probably. And they really wanted to get him. They kind of cornered him in the hallway and said, can you just like talk something into this song?

And so he just kind of like did it, you know, it was like. So he's not like he's rapping, but again, that was a great extension. Yeah. I think one of the things that Sonic Youth did on Goo, that was a real accomplishment, and maybe they didn't even realize that at the time, and it's part of their whole story, is they brought the underground into the mainstream. And sometimes when they did that, the people they brought along got more popular than them. But if you look at Goo, they're still using their team of people. They've got the typical kind of artwork that they use on the covers. And they're

in this case, it's Raymond Pettibone, who was a great underground artist at the time. So they didn't compromise in that way. And they, you know, they made it a point to take the elements of their own posse and their own scene and kind of bring them into the mainstream. But so I think that's one of the main accomplishments of goo was that it wasn't a sellout record and they really stayed true to themselves as much as you possibly could when you make that leap to, as you guys earlier said, into, into, the big time. Well, let's play a non-single off of it. Uh, so the singles were cool thing, Dirty Boots, and Disappearer. Okay. Or the three. So, um, I picked Tunic song for Karen. I just really like the whole story behind it, the lyrics. So let's play that real quick and then we'll get back into it.

Such an eerie song. Oh, man. Yeah, it blew me away the first time I heard it, which was like two weeks ago, by the way. But yeah. Yeah, it reflects another interesting part of the Sonic Youth story, which was another layer to them, which is that as sort of imposing and intimidating as they could be both as people and their early records, they also had this pop culture love aspect of them. They were kind of fascinated by like Madonna. And, you know, they were taking Madonna seriously, you know, in the mid-80s and even remaking Into the Groove as into the groovy, their own version of it.

When people were kind of writing her off as like pop tart or whatever, you know, and they were like, and she was part of that downtown scene too, you know. So they've always, they were like children of pop culture and of TV and movies and top 40. Didn't they like bring a boombox on stage like before they performed and just played a Carpenter's record or something like that? Exactly. And it was before they, yeah, it was very good. Yeah, right before they recorded, long before they recorded tuning. But they would do that and they would have Madonna records. And they would, it was, it was again very unusual.

You didn't see REM doing. Yeah. Right. It seems like they had this sincere fascination with kind of the mainstream, even though they were never going to get anywhere close to it. So it seems like they were kind of students of pop culture, huh? They were students of pop culture and of classic music, classic rock music, which is some of the things that I kind of learned researching the book.

I mean, Lee Rinaldo, who is the guitar player, grew up as a Long Island deadhead. and loved, you know, Crosby Still's Nash and Young. And, you know, Kim Gordon loved Johnny Mitchell and, uh, and did a high school, a dance to a Crosby's song called Wooden Ships, you know, and, uh, I love that song. Love that song. Yeah. It's a great song. Uh, so, and, you know, it's, um, so it's not like they grew up listening to, uh, the most avant-garde, you know, free jazz, you know, right? They were, they were children of, of, of rock and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, And Karen Carpenter had died, I guess, about seven or eight years before the goo was recorded.

And Kim Gordon was probably fascinated with her story, having heard those records growing up. And it's such a tragic story that she had anorexia was probably the first, you know, high-profile celebrity who died from that. It was a really, you know, had self-worth and weight issues her whole life and ultimately died. I died from it. And so here's this really eerie song about Karen Carpenter in Heaven, you know, looking down at her brother and seeing all these other dead rock stars around her. And it was just at that moment, I think, too.

A few years later, there was a Carpenter's tribute album called If I Were a Carpenter, which featured Sonic Youth and all these other kind of indie bands of the 90s, remaking Karen Carpenter songs. So again, Tanya Kuth were a little head of the curve by saying, no, we want to take Karen Carpenter seriously as she wasn't just some, you know, bland top 40 singer who died. She actually, there's a lot of, like, darkness to that story. And we're going to sort of bring that out, which not a lot of people were doing at the time. Well, especially not on your first major record label release, right? Because how many kids listening to that had no clue here they were singing about, you know?

If they were trying to reach the younger age group, right? They were, and it's funny. You mentioned Dirty Boots, which was, I think, the first single from this record. And if you go back and watch the video from that, they're playing in some club with these kids and, like, flannel shirts in the audience. And they see, like, a young guy and a young woman, like, looking at each other. And, like, by the end of the video, they've kind of hooked up. And it was just like, oh, God. So that's maybe their record label kind of putting their hand.

in the business thing. Something was a little strange there. Speaking of the eerieness of that song, can we just talk about her voice for a little bit? I just love the way she sings. It's always like a, almost like a lazy delivery. I mean, you know, it's almost like spoken word in a lot of her songs. And I love that.

Yeah, and I got to say, like, having not really, you know, I haven't really listened to too much Sonic Youth prior to getting ready for this episode. and like it didn't take long for me to fall in love with with her and what she does and what she brings to the table and like her vocals and stuff is just so amazing from track to track too like it's you know it sounds kind of eerie in this song but like there's other tracks where she she brings such raw energy to it you know i just maybe this is just a we can talk about how great she is for a for a little bit you know yeah she's uh an icon for a good reason and you know she

That's an example of, you know, she will admit, Kim will admit she's not like the world's greatest bass player or not a classically trained singer, but she made that kind of all work for her. I mean, her bass playing is incredibly recognizable. It's, again, really very low end. It's almost like the bass is scraping the floor. You know, it's like really, I've used that word dank before, but it's, it has that, you know, underground subway ride quality to it.

And her voice is, yes, she can like scream it out or like in tunic in song for Karen. It's the sort of almost very penetrating kind of almost spoken part that she does. It's just so intimate, you know. Yeah. And it's very, it's very arresting. I mean, it's like it just pulls you in right away, even though she's not crooning or anything. And she's not and she's not just talking or being out. out of tune. It's like it's a very mesmerizing quality to her.

Totally. You know what? I think we might call it haunting, Travis. It's one of our favorite ways to describe songs. I think we use it maybe once an episode. Well, I think, I think, David, I think that's what you said when we stopped playing the track there. And when you use the word, he used, he used Erie. Oh, you used Erie. Okay. See, not we'll use that word from now. But haunting would apply. Well, we overuse. I don't write for wrongs. There's a couple of, There's a couple of words that we tend to overuse when describing things, and one of them is haunting. So I'm taking notes here on things to say, because you've said plenty of great descriptors that I'm going to try to borrow going forward. But yeah.

So Quentin and I used to write a music blog together back in like 2009. I'm sure we took all of Rolling Stones traffic away. No, it was us and everybody else. Like everybody had a music blog back then. And it just, yeah, it became very like. I started to notice how I would repeat myself on like trying to describe, maybe because all the band sounded the same back then that we were reviewing. But like, yeah.

So mad props to to professional writers. You guys have to come up with new and interesting ways to describe the same kind of time. It's hard. It is a challenge. I will say, after doing it many years, yes. Let's take a quick break. All right. So let's jump to Dirty.

So this came out in 92. So what happens right before that, I guess, and maybe you can help me out with the timing on this, David. But so Sonic Youth, Thurston and Kim, they were fans of what they were hearing from Nirvana. They got a copy of bleach. And they were like playing it in the studio, like showing it off to St. Germain. And they wore a Nirvana logo t-shirt during one of the, their, their music video shoots. And basically they were kind of suggesting to Geffen, hey, like, you guys should get Nirvana.

Like, get Cobain in here, get them on Geffen Records. And Cobain ended up signing with Geffen partly because of his love for Sonic Youth. Yes. One of the things that I think was very savvy about Geffen Records signing Sonic Youth. was I think they sensed that there was this whole underground indie rock world that would be interested in signing to a major record company, but had that wariness towards selling out and all that. And certainly Kurt and Eddie Vedder dealt with that much later on in their careers.

But so having Sonic Youth on your label, and they were on a special label called DGC, which is part of Geffen. It was almost like a carrot, you know, to other bands. You know, it basically, it made Geffen seem cool. And it made, it made other bands like, and people like, like Kurd, who was interested in becoming a rock star. And I'm hiding that. But they, they heard all the war stories about those other bands before, like Husko Do and the replacements, getting swept up in the major label thing and then basically breaking up or imploding and not, It didn't go well for those.

It happens all the time. Happens all the time. All the time. All the time. And so for them, for Thurston Moore to tell someone like Kurt Cobain, hey, you know, it's cool to sign with Geffen, they'll treat you right and they'll let you be yourself. Because Sonic Uth at that point embodied integrity in rock and roll at that time. They, you know, even despite all the problems with goo, they, you know, they stayed true to themselves in so many ways. and they sold a decent amount of records.

It wasn't millions, but they sold enough. And bands like Nirvana would look at what happened there and go, oh, okay, like you can get the records in the stores, which, again, this is pre-streaming. But, you know, one of the problems with all the cool indie labels of the 80s was they didn't have great distribution. So you could record some cool single album, and it wouldn't be in the Tower Records. or maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't, you wouldn't know. Geffen Records had the records in the stores. That was very important. But they let you be yourself.

And I think so, yes, when it was hugely important to someone like Kurt Cobain that Sonic Youth were on Geffen and telling them, hey, they're cool. Vouching for them. They won't, they mess with us that much. They won't mess with you that much. And, of course, later on, Sonic Youth cashed in those chips when they, and they got a better contract with Geffen because they said, look what we brought you.

But but so loosely quoting from your book here, I like how you say you said that Nirvana was drawn into the Sonic Youth solar system. And you also bring up, like you said, you know, Geffen was smart and that they recognized that Sonic Youth kind of had this like underground, that, you know, they just knew all these like underground filmmakers and, artists and other underground indie bands. And I like, you quote, one of the assistants in the radio department of DGC saying, like, basically he had to like study up at Sonic Youth College to, you know, get to where he was able to know who they were talking about when they were bringing up all these artists and, you know, filmmakers and stuff just so they, so he could be at that level of cool. So, yeah, that's, I mean, they completely changed the game for Geffen.

They really did. Geffen was, you know, like I said, as we discussed earlier, known as this big mainstream rock label. And thanks to Sonic Youth, they became an important way station, I think, for a lot of these kind of bands. And I think, yeah, I think, like, you know, the second record, dirty was another example of that in that. You know, there was a single called 100%, the first single from that record. which was directed by a guy named Spike Jones. Oh, that guy. Who, you know, like, yeah, you know, that guy.

He was also part of that. He was just a skateboarder who was making skate videos. And they were totally on top of that world and keeping an eye on that community. And so they hired him. And who else is in that video acting Jason Lee, who of course would end up being an almost famous. Was Sophia Coppola? Sophia Coppola was in another video from that album. She was dating Spike Jones.

Is that right? Like Jones, yes. Very incestuous little scene. So they were just plugged in to sort of this vibrant culture and sort of pulling in all the different players and stuff. Yes. Yeah. And yeah, and for album covers, Mike Kelly was an underground artist who knew him in college. And he did that bunny on the cover of Dirty.

So they, you know, they even there like. they wouldn't almost never put photos of themselves on their album covers. It's very rare. It's not, they don't even have traditional album covers, you know. Mostly it was like some, some oddball piece of art. Yeah. You know, that they, that sometimes was by a friend of theirs, sometimes it wasn't, but they just carried all these people along with them on their kind of weird little

journey into Heartland America. So if you went to, if you went to Tower Records and, and wanted to buy a sonic Youth Record, yeah, you'd see this weird cartoon on the cover of Google by Raymond Pettibone with this couple fleeing a crime scene or, you know, it's like, you know, what this was. Or like a weird crochet little bunny rabbit, like on dirty. Yes, on dirty. Yes. Yeah. And these were, you know, they were basically introducing a portion of, of mainstream America to underground artists and underground filmmakers like Spike Jones and underground music in a way that, you know, again, that was kind of revolutionary in a way. Really cool. So Butch Figg had just finished up,

recording Nevermind, and then it had just been released in September of 91. 30 years ago this month. Oh, man. That's crazy. Yeah, that's right. And so they brought in Butch Vig to produce dirty, right? And so from what I gathered from your book, so Geffen brought him in because it made sense, right? Because Nevermind was immediately a huge success. But Sonic Youth kind of just liked him because he was more, he was like them in a way. He was more punk rock is the way they put it.

Not necessarily because he recorded, never mind, they wanted to work with him just because they felt like he was more like them. Yeah, he was a drummer in the hardcore bands. And he had his own indie rock roots. He had his cred. He had his cred. And he wasn't like some big time cigar puffing, you know, record producer or whatever. He was definitely kind of part of their world.

And I think they were curious to, you know, make a polished rock record. You know, I think it was all completely. pressure of the label, but everybody saw what happened with Nevermind. And it's sort of funny because the same month, the Nevermind came out. The same company, Geffen Records, put out an album by a Texas band called Galactic Cowboys. And they were a sort of hard rock, sort of metal, but kind of melodic bands, long hair and everything. Very, not hair metal, but, Not too far removed here. And I remember at the time, I was working at Entertainment Weekly magazine.

And the buzz coming out from all the press people was like, oh, Galactic Cowboys, that's going to be the big record. And oh, yeah, we also signed this band called Nirvana. It's kind of cool. And, of course, most people never heard Galactic Cowboys and don't remember it. Right. And it was such a, that was such a 180-degree moment or something. culture when the Nirvana record explodes and the more mainstream rock record that everyone

thought would explode implodes. And it just took everyone completely by surprise. And it made everyone think, oh, well, gee, maybe we could have one of those ourselves, whether it was the record companies or bands like Sonic Q. They were like, oh, well, maybe people are open to hearing these discordant, edgier sounds on the radio, and if they're produced a little bit better, you know, like, never mind is a pretty well-produced record. I mean, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's contured really well. And, and so everyone's

thinking, oh, we can kind of do that. And I think Sonic Youth were, we're, we're open to that too. And so they had, you know, they worked really hard on those songs, which were, again, I wouldn't say catchy, but, but, but they were, they were more compact in a lot of ways. and they were a little more human. You know, there was a song about the death of one of their friends, and there were things in that record that were not, they weren't as distanced or ironic as Sonic Youth could be. There was a little more emotional.

Well, and they also brought in Andy Wallace to mix it, right? So that's the same duo, Butch Vig, Andy Wallace, that did, Nevermind. Right. So let's play a non-single from Dirty. Let's name off the singles. we have 100%, which from what I read was their highest ranking single, at least at the time, maybe ever. Right. It reached number four on Billboard's Modern Rock Chart.

And we've got Youth Against Fascism, Sugarcane, and Drunken Butterfly. And we should add that when they put out Youth Against Fascism, the record company printed up bumper stickers and misspelled fascism. Oh, my gosh. So it was like one of many examples of, you know, the big conglomerate. trying to market Sonic Youth and kind of missing the boat. Mispelling it on purpose would be one thing. Right, right, right. No, it was not on purpose.

All right, so we're going to play track three, actually. This one is called Teresa's Soundworld. It's interesting you pick that song. This is a great song and performance because that's, when I interviewed Thurston Moore from my book, he said of all the music they made during that time, with Butch Vig, which was two albums, that's his favorite track of anything they did with him. Awesome.

I think that's a great example of the way that someone like Butch could help them harness their sound without losing any of its sort of fury. You know, it's really contained. And it's, and it's, it flows really well. And it has, you know, the song faded out before you heard this kind of instrumental freak out. out, but it's not, it immediately goes right back into the kind of pulse of the song. It's kind of like hills and valleys, like a little journey in that song. Yeah, and that's what's interesting about his voice is that he can also be sort of reserved and like sort of like, like you were saying contained, I think is what you said,

but like around it is all of that. Haunting. Haunting, right? But like around all of it is sort of like the, like, you know, right on the edge of becoming a little bit more like frenetic and stuff and chaotic and stuff like that. It just seems like it's like about to, like there's like a pressure or something like that

being built up that it's about to go into something. Like you said, I think it sounds like it opens up right after we faded out. So I have one, there's one reason why I picked this song and it's a quote that I pulled from your book that Butch Vig says here, he's talking about Shelley, who asked him to turn the drums

down when the song arrived at its careening midsection. Sorry, that's actually your, that's your words, David. That's a trademark. So, so Vig says, I don't know anybody in a band who's ever said that, but they wanted the guitars to become literally this wall of sound and the bass and drums to be a pulse mixed behind it. So Wall of Sound, that is synonymous with, you know, Loveless and Shugays, all that stuff. And Loveless had just come out.

Just come out. Yeah. Right. Same area. Yeah. 91. 91. Right.

So, yeah. Who did it first, right? Like, I mean, My Bloody Valentine's been around since the 80s. Like, I'm always curious about about that, that shoe gaze sound and that, like, specifically that wall of sound. And like, I guess Kevin Shields, like, glide guitar style that he did, you know, like, who influenced too? I feel like maybe Sonic Youth had had something to do with that. I would even go back to Jesus and Mary Chain in the 80s.

They were also one of the first who, you know, who had to build those wall of guitars. But, yeah, who influenced who in that way? As far as those records in the 90s, that's a good question. So I had read that Kevin Shields was a big fan of Glenn Bronca. Is that how you say his name? Glenn Bronca, yes. And Thurston Moore and Ronaldo, they both played guitar in his group back in, I guess it was the 80s, right? The early 80s.

Yeah, another key member of that scene, who's older than them, but Glenn Bronco, who passed away a couple years ago, would have these, right, these sort of almost symphonic, kind of somewhat classical pieces, but for, you know, 25 guitars, electric guitars. and he would have these guitar symphonies, and they were just overpowering 80 feet high wall of sound of guitars. I think Sonic definitely took a lot from him. Did they borrow his weird guitar tunings too? Was that awesome to him? Some of that as well. Although I think they took it in different directions,

especially in terms of what they would do is partly, again, out of economics, a lot of Sonic Youth's guitars were like used, beat up, reconfigured and that added a whole new element to the tunings you know because the guitars were like Frankenstein monster type creation right yeah and i noticed that was something that butch fig was trying to do with them in the studio like sure they could have their weird tunings but it had to be like precisely that tune like that tuning for throughout the recording so that it would be consistent right so that's totally different from what they're used to and i know they he added some processing effects to Gordon's voice, like, in the mix.

And they were throwing, like, drum samples on top of Shelley's snare and all that stuff. So, I mean, yeah, it does, it does kind of sound like a nevermind kind of, like a Butch Figg record, right? Yeah. It was their most produced record. And I think intentionally on everybody's part, you know, it was like, let's see how far we can take this. how far we can polish the sound of the beast before while still maintaining its inherent qualities

and kind of slip it past the mainstream, you know, slide it in there kind of thing. And I think, yeah, I think Butch did a great job of that. I'm really keeping them on a, I would say, a short leash, but having them rehearse songs over and over again and get those parts exactly right. And it was kind of a big experiment, really, on their part and even on the record company's part. I mean, everybody really thought Dirty was going to be Nevermind Part 2, even though Sonic Youth were like 10 years older than Kurt Cobain and they were 15 years older

than the teenagers who bought, never mind. But it was such a crazy world. And that's the things that was kind of amazing about that scene is that there was this possibility that, wow, maybe all these weird culty or underground guitar bands could actually sell records if Nirvana could? And suddenly you have, you know, the bands like King Missal from New York or a team. each fan club from the UK or Red Cross and other ones. They had small followings and suddenly you had all these American companies throwing all this

money at them and saying it's just gold rush. Everyone's going to be like Nirvana, which of course was never going to happen. But it was, you know, it's interesting to me to, for example, at Rolling Stone, they have this digital wall of all, every cover of the magazine going back to 1967. And you can walk by and it glides past you, these digital reproductions. And when you get to the 90s, you see like Nirvana's on the cover, Pearl Jam. We haven't talked about Pearl Jam, but that was part of this too. But then you see like a man like Belly, you know, who were a largely female-centric

indie guitar band who got the major label contract. Never sold any records, but there they were on the cover of Rolling Stone. Pearl Jam, let's not forget, Pearl Jam's 10 came out also in the fall of 1991. And dirt. And so did Soundgarden's Bad Motor Finger came out this same month. I mean, the same month you had all three of those records. This is kind of an amazing thing to think about. Something we didn't mention earlier, but

Butch Figg had done In Between Nevermind and Dirty, he had done Gish by Smashing Pumpkins. Right. Which is kind of interesting because that album had sort of a Not really not really shoegades, but more like a psychedelic. You know, Smashing Pumpkins had kind of a psychedelic

Flair to it. Grungy shoeges. Yeah, grungy shoeges with psychedelic stuff like that. Right, right. I guess it's all kind of in there. And then they got signed to a major after that. too for Siamese Dream. So that was 93. Yeah. So again, you had this sense of like, wow, this whole new world is opened up.

And people like, you know, the mainstream rock stuff that we talked about earlier, Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, stuff, you know, Brian Adams. That stuff was all kind of played out by this point, you know, not that those people were over and done with, but that stuff had sort of peaked, you know, those acts weren't selling as many records. And you had this whole new audience, Gen X, you know, coming up and saying, we want our own music. And we're not interested in this hokey guitar band's guitar rock stuff from from the past, you know, there was suddenly this massive market, the Lalapluza tour was 1991, the first one. And then the second one was 92 with Pearl Jam and Ministry. And suddenly it's selling out like major outdoor venues.

It was a wild time. We had out chili peppers 1991 with Under the Bridge and Breaking Girl and all those songs from Blood Sugar, Sex, Magic. That was a huge album. And suddenly all this stuff

is in the top 10 and dominating MTV. And so everyone thought, well, Sonic Gute will be next. Yeah. It just didn't happen though. I mean, it sold a little bit more than goo, is that right?

But not by much. It did. It sold like, I'm trying to remember 200,000 copies, maybe something like that, which was pretty respectable for indie band, but nothing like the, I can't remember, the millions that never mine sold. And, you know, I think Sonic Youth were, like I said, they were a little older, a little weirder,

they weren't writing, there was no real smells like Teen Spirit. Yeah, yeah. Type in their repertoire, even though they sort of tried, but it wasn't their destiny. Yeah, they didn't have any really big, like hooks or anything like that in their songs, right? I mean, it seemed like they were just a little bit more. Right.

They were different enough to where it just didn't work, I guess, for the mainstream. But in a way, like, removed from it, like, that's kind of what makes them so special and so great, right? But maybe at the time, this was their moment to try to make it big, it sounds like, with this record. It was. And yet they still were who they were. I mean, if you went to see them live back then, they would still, there was always that moment it would come when one of it, they would be playing some song and it would just deteriorate into this like feedback guitar jam. Yeah.

Where they'd be like putting the guitars into the amps and getting all this feedback out and maybe just dropping the guitars on the ground and just making strange sounds with picking up a nail file and scraping it against the thing. And again, that was just true to who they were and what they would do in clubs in New York City in the early 80s. And they were now just doing this on bigger stages. But, you know, having been to some of those shows and both those heroes, you know, the kids who were there like expecting Jeremy or some equivalent to, you know, even flow, we're like, what, what is, what's going on here? Yeah. It was like it was utterly baffling, you know, to a lot of people.

Yeah, but that sort of mirrors the, the shoegades wall of sound type stuff, right? Where it's just like this, you know, you just hit with all this feedback and stuff and this. noise. Noise. Right, right. That's interesting. And in interviews, they'd always be kind of like sarcastic or aloof. Yeah.

They weren't like playing the game particularly well. You know, they, you know, they went along and you'd see them on MTV, something like that. But it, but you could tell, they weren't, it was kind of half-hearted in a way. So after dirty, I mean, I don't know if you would call it a flop, but it definitely was underwhelming for what they expected from it. They basically just decided to, to, I guess, do it their way again for experimental jet set trash and no star. They brought Butch Vig along, but they basically almost wanted to do like a complete 180 in the studio where it's like, let's just try and do these all in one take or whatever, you know, let's not spend however many

takes. Let's just do it. If it feels right, let's move on to the next song. That's very telling, I feel like, after, you know, the first two albums on the major label, you know, they're already done with it. They're like, we played your game. We're going to go back to doing it our way. Yeah, and that's a great point. And it's so interesting how quickly they got fed up. Yeah. With that kind of situation, other bands would have just kept, you know, filing down their sound more and more. And like, okay, let's just, let's keep at it. We're getting closer. We're getting closer. Right.

Because they kind of were. If you think about it, they went from selling whatever. 100, 150,000 of goo to, they sold more of dirty. So, you know, it was a bit of an uphill. It was a, you know, the trajectory was going up there in terms of the sales, if not dramatically. And any other band would have been like, okay, we're on to something. Let's get whoever's the hot new person to produce our next record. And they were already like, okay, been there, done that. This isn't for us.

they always wanted to maintain their kind of cool integrity aspect. And at the same time, they also, they brought along, you know, for one of the videos they had this unknown model where she was actually a skateboard kid named Chloe Seveney. For Dirty? Yeah. Was it Sugarcane? Sugar cane. That's right.

Yeah. Yeah. So the video for Sugarcane, they have their friends in pavement in the audience. And they have Chloe Sevenier on this runway. another little snapshot of the Sonic Youth universe, in this case of 1992, 1993. And Chloe Seventheney was just this kid from Connecticut who'd been in kids that skateboard movie, and she wasn't like starring on HBO series and all the stuff that she would do later. And they just, you know, she became part of their circle too.

And they cast her in this video again. And this is the time, you know, when sometimes you'd see videos with sort of celebrity guests and Sonic keeps doing it with like completely unknown people. Although a couple of albums later they did have McCauley Colkin. Really? But that was like eight years after Home Alone. This gawky teenager. They brought him back.

They brought him back. It was part of the Macaulay revival. I wonder if that was during his, his pizza underground days. Do you know what I'm talking about? I do not. Pizza underground. Okay. Maybe this is completely.

false, but I heard that McCauley Clooken was in a Velvet Underground tribute band, and they changed up all the lyrics to be about pizza. Oh, the Pizza Underground, you're right. I can't make that out. No, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you're right. You're right. This was 2014.

2014. Yeah, so a little bit later. 2014. Pizza Underground, yeah. That does sound like something new. You learn something new on every podcast. There you go. It's what I say.

Yeah. So with experimental jet set, is it. true that they went back and recorded it at Sears Sound. Was that actually the same studio that they recorded Cister in? It was. So they totally were like, let's go back to our comfort zone. Totally go back. Sadly enough, almost all of these famous New York recording studios where they made their records are gone.

That's not surprising. I tried to track. Even 10 years ago when I did the book, they were all starting to collapse. But yes, they went back to that same place. They used Butch big again. but they kind of laid down the law and like, yeah, we're going to do these songs quick and fast and not labor over them. And some of them are just kind of weird little wiffy things. They're not even complete songs in the way Sonic Youth songs could be.

And, yeah, the motto for the sessions became good enough. I love that. Yeah, sounds good enough. Good enough for us. It sounds like that's kind of they had always had. that sort of like good enough mentality, right, up to, to go, right, before they started to try to take it more seriously. So that's just, that's just their, what they did, right? Kind of how they approached it. Right. Right. Yeah. Well, I love, I love experimental jet set, actually. Like,

that might be my favorite out of the three. In what way? I'm, you know, I like the songs are a little bit shorter, you know, they're a little more poppy. I like, they, there are some moments that are, more experimental. And like with Tokyo I with that, the way they, I don't know if it's a drum sample or what, but yeah, there's just it seems more playful maybe. I don't know. It's different.

So I had the same thought actually of the three. This was my favorite record. And to me it felt the most like cohesive of the three records. Like it sounded all very like unified, I guess. I don't know. It just sounded, it also sounded darker.

That's another word I use all the time. the way. So that word almost means nothing because I use it so often. But like, so are you familiar with a band called Spoon? David, you probably are. Spoon? Yeah, sure. So like there was a, the early, the 90s era spoon, which was like girls can tell. And I guess a little bit of the one before that series of sneaks had a similar vibe. And that maybe that's the only reason I like it because it reminded me of some of Spoons early stuff. And I think it's safe to say after listening to this that the Brad Daniel of Spoon's, Boone was probably influenced by Sonic Youth quite a bit because this this record in particular

kind of to me at least reminds me of that stuff. But yeah, it just had a more, to me it just had a more cohesive sound to it. And it just, it just from start to finish, it just really float really well to me. No, I think you're right about that. I listened back to it the other day to prepare for this. And I haven't listened to it in a few years. And I think at the time it didn't It felt more, it felt just kind of more oddball and quirkier than the two before. Like all those series of like shorter songs, like you said. And some of them seemed like they were just building to a head of something and then the end. And it seemed like at the time less ambitious, I guess I would say, than the three before.

I mean, if you start with Daydream Nation. Like you said, good enough, right? Good enough. Yeah. And this seemed more small scale, Sonic Youth in a way. But I think it's aged really well. I think you're right. And I think the last song, Sweet Shine that Kim sings, is really beautiful.

Really pretty. Yeah. Yeah. So, and now, and it's interesting because Travis and I are coming into this, having just listened to this album for the first time, you know, a couple weeks ago, right? So you heard it when it came out, obviously. So you've got all these decades that have gone by. You have a relationship with it, obviously, that's years long.

And you can think of it when it comes. came out versus after listening to it again after a few years and now with all this all the different kind of styles of music that is that has come and gone since then you know how it it plays a little bit differently now yeah and i think that's another thing to to talk about too is like our our relationship to this record uh you know we have the indie rock that we the quentin and i kind of grew up with which was bands like the strokes and interpoll and all that other that wave of indie music that happened, the garage rock post-punk revival stuff that happened in the

2000s, 2010s and stuff like that. So, like, we can, like, it all, I can see how it comes from records like this. Like, you know, it seems like this was like the precursor to that kind of stuff. Because I'm hearing a lot of similarities to indie

bands that made music in the 2000s and stuff. It seems like they kind of point back to this record a little bit. I think you draw a line from this to like the first strokes record. Yeah. totally for sure even like the sound of it you know the way that uh julian's voice was recorded on that record through that microphone and stuff like that it's it's got that it's got that same you know that same downtown new york vibe i guess you could say to it if that means anything to

anyone outside of new york but but um but yeah i mean uh i i i think you know it's it's it's it's interesting how um as i said earlier sonic you've never quite made it but But they set the scene for so many other things in music. They brought all these other people along with them who did so much better than them and made a bigger cultural impact in a way that it's kind of an unfortunate thing. But it's quite a legacy at the same time. Yeah, totally. Well, let's play our last track here.

So we have one more track off a jet set here. The surprise track. This is the surprise track. We switch this one out at the last minute. And speaking of quirky, this one's like very quirky. I love the story behind this one. So we're going to play track five. This one's called Screaming Skull.

It's fading out there. This is another song where he just crams a bunch of pop culture references into it. I mean, the first time I heard the song, all I kept hearing was Pat Smear. Pat Smear. And I was like, that's hilarious. But, well, so do you want to tell the story, David, or should I? Because I read from your book the story behind this, and I love it. Yeah, it's them.

It's when Kim and Thurston, well, well, in the early days, Sonic Youth Recorded for a label called SST Records, which was one of the big indie labels of the 80s. And, but they ended up moving to another label, partly because they weren't always getting paid. There were financial things, distribution issues. as we discussed earlier with some of those companies. And so there they are now in the 90s, and they come across an SST Records Superstore in Hollywood or L.A. somewhere.

You know, in other words, their former label who could barely afford to pay them has opened this record store selling their old records to cash in on the alternative alt-rock mania. It was called Alt-Rock at the time. It wasn't called Indy Rock. It was the worst term ever, Alt-Rock. I agree 100%. That's a whole other thing. In the 80s with REM, these bands were starting, it was called college rock.

When I hear college rock, I think REM immediately. Exactly. And then in the early 90s, when this stuff was happening, the industry was like, what do we call it now? And it became alternative rock. And then it became short into Alt Rock. And then eventually it became indie much later. So anyway, here's this store selling vintage, you know, vintage, alt, college rock and the whole song is a sarcastic list of references to records in the stores.

Yeah, all the bands that they see are flipping through records. And then he mentions Pat Smir, a guitarist for germs, and Pat Smir was working there at the time. And he later went on there to join Nirvana and then foo fighters too. But he also says one of the lines is let's go their sisters there. So he's referencing their record sister. Oh, sisters there. Like it's a sisters there. Okay, okay. Yeah, that's great, man. Yeah, love it. It's a fun, it's a fun song. So it's kind of a quirky song too. I guess that's, you were saying that this record sounded more playful to you and that's probably what you're talking about right? Right. I think that's a fair, it's a fair thing to say about it for sure.

And it sounds like if they're, if they're just like, you know what, let's just make a record the way we want to make it. It seems like that would be the time to, to have a little bit more fun, you know, and just kind of not worry about it. Because this, you wouldn't throw a song like this on a record that's trying to make it big. Although this sounds like a song that you may have heard on like a president of the United States of America record or something like that. You know what I mean? Like that kind of playful kind of stuff. And that guitar is how to like a very grunge chord progression to me.

So like it sounds like this came out in 94. It was almost like a, like that desert rock sound. I mean, just like that guitar riff at the very end sounded very like. like, I don't know, desert rock, maybe like Queens of the Stone Age or Caius, maybe? Chias, yes. Cajas, yeah. Stoner rock. Stone or rock, yeah.

Yes. Also known as Stone of rock. Also, right. The shame of this record, though, is that they didn't tour it to promote it because Kim and Thurston had a baby. Right. In 1994, Coco. And so they took that year off.

And then when they finally hit the road again in 95, that was, they had already put out another record called Washing Machine. And so they were doing a lot of those songs. And so that's another reason I think Experimental Jet Set is sort of somewhat forgotten. It just wasn't played up on tour. There wasn't like a big tour where they played all these songs or a lot of the songs like a band does. You know, we're promoting our new record and here's six songs from it, along with some of your favorite gold, old and oldies. They didn't do that here. And so a lot of people never got to hear these songs live, which is kind of a shame because it would have been cool. Although I didn't, I did

in, gosh, I guess it was two years ago now. Pre-pandemic times, Sonic Youth put out a whole bunch of music on band camp, including all these live recordings. And there's one from Spain in 93, which is them doing early live versions of these experimental jet set songs. Some of them are instrumental. Some of them have different lyrics. Cool. But it's really great. I highly recommend it. It's also really well recorded and stuff. And it's a great

thing they enter from the ball. So that's one of the few times where you get to hear some of these songs live. Awesome. Yeah. And support band camp, which is a good thing. Yeah. Well, that's it, man. That's all we got. Thank you so much

for chatting with us, man. Sure. It was really. It was a lot of fun. I appreciate your interest in Sonic Youth. You know, it's, it's good to see somewhat, some youngsters getting into them because sometimes I wonder like, do you know, are they being forgotten now? Yeah. You know, especially as, as Alt Rock recedes more into the history books. And people think back on that era now.

And they only think of Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Right. And Sound Garden. Maybe smashing pumpkins. Yeah. And we've talked about that before, actually, that, you know, so we grew, up in the 90s and so our brother, our older brother, we would listen to his CD. It's kind of similar to you listen to your sister's music, right? And he only had the Smashing Pumpkins records and the

the Pearl Jam and the, he had Sont Temple Pilots, stuff like that. But it was just the, he didn't have Sonic Youth, right? Not to throw him under the bus or anything like that, but I'm just saying like, you know, the older we get, when we go back and like what I, what I appreciate is is finding the the and it's not it's weird to call sonic youth obscure because they're not but like the more the more obscure stuff you mentioned a minute men earlier like first one of the first things you talked about was the minute men i just stumbled upon them maybe a few weeks ago we're actually featured on the podcast as like a on one of our what you heard episodes um anyway so like yeah you know this is what we live for just like finding these these bands that maybe didn't get much

attention like this is kind of one of the one of the things we like to do on no filler at least is talking about these more obscure bands, but Sonic Youth is one of those bands that everybody knows about maybe, like everybody has heard the name, but maybe you're just not that familiar with their music. And yeah, it was great to go back and listen to these records because you can totally hear their influence on the music that we listened to in the 2000. So I think, you know, if we were to talk about the legacy, I think you'd said, like, you know, are they being forgotten?

and maybe, but I feel like their legacy is still very much, like, the impact is still there, you know, on bands that are making music right now, indie rock bands that are putting on music right now, you know. They made it kind of acceptable to be weird and still be weird in the mainstream kind of thing. That's an important aspect. And, you know, they did have an interesting, almost mainstream moment in around 2008. there was this weird confluence of things where they

here's a bit of 90s I'm sorry 2000s nostalgia for everybody when Starbucks sold CDs I do remember that right at the front counter They don't do that anymore? They don't do that anymore I remember that And they had their own company called see here music

But they put out a Starbucks only Sonic Youth collection What? Called Hitsurfer Squares Every song was chosen by one of their famous friends. So Spike Jones picked his favorite Sonic Youth song, Chloe Sevenier, go down the list. That's pretty cool. All you have to do is look at that record. It's still available and look at the credits and see who picked which song. And you'll see their legacy right there on that record of all these artists and musicians who were big fans of theirs and who they championed

the way. And at the same time, one of their songs was in the soundtrack of Juno. Oh yeah, that movie. That's a big one. And they were even part of the dialogue, Justin Baton. Jason. Jason. Jason, sorry. Jason Bateman having this conversation with the Ellen Page character. Oh, yeah.

He's trying to tell him, hey, Sonic Youth are really cool. Yeah. She's like, it's just noise or something. That's kind of like the shins showing up in the garden state. Oh, yes. Well, the funny thing is like that, I feel like that propelled the shins. Like, that's what put them on a lot of people's radar. Yeah.

I guess that didn't really happen for. Sonic Youth and June. He didn't have Sonic Youth. And then the third thing, right at the same time, was cool thing was in Guitar Hero. So, you know, that's funny. It's like downloadable content. I don't think it was ever one of the original songs. But yeah, talk about random.

There's probably a story to be, to be written, David, about the guitar hero, the guitar hero effect. Like, is that a thing? Like, I know that there are young, really young people that would never, ever in a million years hear a Steely Dan song. for example. And I know Bada Zadfa is on rock band or something like that, that, you know, that Steeley Dan, I don't remember what a record he was on. I think it was on Countdown to Exocene or something like that. But we want to talk about a song that most of the kids that played guitar hero or rock band

would never in a million years listened to. But here it is, you know, suddenly there. And that's a whole other show right there. Yeah, there again. The Starbucks years, rock band. The Starbucks Guitar Hero years. Yeah, totally. Yeah, that could be a whole other segment for you.

Part two of this episode coming next week. So we usually have an outro song that we'll do for our episodes. And I thought it might be fun. So we have what we call our what you heard episodes. Basically, we pick five songs, just music we've been hearing in between recordings. And we do an entire episode where we just play music the whole time and talk about the music. So we were thinking we could have us outro out this episode with a song that you've heard. recently that you really liked if you can think of anything on the spot it can be anything anything

any era anything sure uh pressures on i'm researching a book right now on the history of music in greenwich village okay and i've been listening to a lot of dave van ronk all right there we go who was something of the inspiration for inside lewin davis the cohen brothers oh cool okay The main character has a little Dave Van Ronkin. So there's someone called Sunday Street. Sunday Street that I've been listening to. So a little gravelly 60s, 70s, Greenwich Village folk for you. Oh, that's going to be great.

Awesome. Well, cool, guys. It was great talking. I appreciate the interest. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for joining us and taking the time to speak with us. Thank you, Quentin and Travis. Keep the faith.

Keep the faith. Yeah, that's good. That's a good sign off. Rocking in the free world. Yeah, that's right. All right, David, take care. All right, have a good one, guys. A nickel not a penny to my name.

I'm the king of tap city and I'm out of the game. A nickel up, a nickel down, another nickel gone. If I ever get back on my feet, I move from Saturday, alley up to Sunday Street. Me seven all the time. I'm going to be a bar and Johnny Walker Black. Six pretty women. And in my gold Cadillac, gonna move the weather living is sweet. From Saturday alley up to Sunday Street.